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Research reflections

Fostering multiliteracies: 1st conference day

By December 18, 2009June 6th, 2019One Comment2 min read5,860 views

Final_PosterExciting first day at the conference on “Fostering multiliteracies through education: Middle Eastern Perspectives” at the American University of Sharjah. Suresh Canagarajah, who blogs on academic writing and publishing in a multilingual, yet English-dominant world, kicked off the day with a talk about code-meshing where he explored multilingualism in student writing. While academic writing is often seen as a bastion of monolingualism, it’s obviously possible for writers to use their multilingualism as a resource to enhance their writing and argument. While many in the TESOL profession have moved beyond deficit views of second language writers, the predominant view is still one of two or more separate languages, of entities rather than practices. Suresh uses the term “code-meshing” to transcend that apparent stability and to refer to the fluidity of language practices where the actual meaning of “English,” “Arabic” or any other language is constantly shifting and getting enmeshed in the language use of multilinguals. Another term for “code-meshing” that seems to be gaining ground is “translanguaging” – I like to call fluidity of linguistic practices “language and communication on the move” or L.CoM.

My personal award for best paper of the day (bearing in mind that we had parallel sessions and I could not attend everything …) goes to Selim Ben Said, who presented his PhD research on the linguistic landscape of Tunis. Apart from the fact that I learnt the interesting tidbit that the map of Tunisia is shaped like a sea horse, Selim’s paper stood out because of its exploration of the relationship between language policy (“The language of Tunisia is Arabic”) and actual linguistic practices in the signage of Tunis, the capital. Code-meshing (or L.CoM 😉 was the central characteristic of all the examples Selim showed with Modern Standard Arabic, French, English, Tunisian Arabic, Hebrew, Italian and even German competing for space. It was also eye-opening to see how the linguistic resources at the disposal of the sign writers are stratified throughout the city, with the more standard Arabic-French signage of Tunis’ Old City giving way to the more diverse signage of the suburbs: the use of “poison frais” (“fresh poison”) instead of “poissons frais” (“fresh fish”) was one of the more entertaining examples, which, of course, sparked a discussion about “errors” in the signs. As Selim rightly pointed out in his response, it’s not about errors but about who controls what is seen as standard and non-standard and who has access to the coveted resource that is called “standard.”

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

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  • Jenny Zhang says:

    Ingrid, thank you for your information. It’s a very interesting PhD research which I can draw on for my analysis of linguistic landscape of Beijing in the Beijing Olympic context. I’ll read more on this topic.

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